Although Before the Dawn is the story of the author's family and of the Meiji restoration, it is much more than that; the aftermath of the events that form its context have fundamentally altered the nature of the world we live in. Its author was a man of sophistication and erudition even though he was not given to virtuoso displays of either quality. He created this novel out of his personal and artistic needs, and out of his sense of the need of Japan and the world community to know the story he tells in it. Japan has been richly served by the original. But Toson had a worldwide as well...

William E. Naff, the distinguished scholar of Japanese literature widely known and highly regarded for his eloquent translations of the writings of Shimazaki Toson (1872-1943), spent the last years of his life writing a full-length biography of Toson. Virtually completed at the time of his death, The Kiso Road provides a rich and colorful account of this canonic novelist who, along with Natsume Soseki and Mori Ogai, formed the triumvirate of writers regarded as giants in Meiji Japan, all three of whom helped establish the parameters of modern Japanese literature. Professor Naff's biography...